Undo the Carioca

THE BRAZILIAN JOURNALIST AND WRITER Ruy Castro will be remembered as the man responsible for chronicling the history of modern Brazil–and making the outside world aware of how fascinating this largest of Latin American nations truly is. His most recent work proves that there is no one who can more eloquently describe the intricate tapestry of music, politics, art, architecture, daily life, and social trends that are the story of the country’s world-famous city, Rio de Janeiro.

Castro is well known to Brazilophiles for his incomparable history of Bossa Nova music and its impact on the world. The English-language version (Bossa Nova: The Story of the Brazilian Music That Seduced the World) perfectly captures the style of Castro’s chit-chatty native Brazilian tongue. Translations are always fraught with the danger of losing the shaded and subtle meanings that are unique to a specific culture, but happily this is not the case here. Castro’s book recreates the perfect image of Rio during the height of Bossa Nova’s popularity. You can visualize a world of sunshine, beaches, waves, and trendy night clubs inhabited by scores of young musicians and songwriters who worshipped famous American crooners like Frank Sinatra–and who were inspired by him, and by others, to create this unique musical style.

In his most recent book, Carnaval No Fogo: Cronica de Uma Cidade Excitante Demais, Castro takes on the history of the city of Rio. In doing so he has achieved the very difficult task of covering all aspects of a city rich in history and tradition, but without getting bogged down in details or engaging in exhaustive historical arguments that would produce a tome so thick that even the most ardent fans of Brazil would give it a miss. The English-language edition, translated by John Gledson, is as loyal to the original Portuguese as the English rendition of his history of Bossa Nova. Once again, Castro’s wit, tongue-in-cheek humor, and art of linking descriptions of famous locations with the actions of historical figures are well preserved. He combines the ability of a journalist to interpret the importance of everyday events with the historian’s eye for tracing cultural and political trends to their roots. His love for his native city, and the pride he takes in being a Brazilian, also shine through, but without the chauvinism (or anti-Americanism) that is too often a substitute for descriptive skill.

Castro starts his story in the summer of 1502, when a Portuguese fleet commanded by Gonçalo Coelho and led by the famous Florentine navigator Amerigo Vespucci, sailed into Guanabara bay. The date was January 1 (hence the inspiration for the name of the city, Rio de Janeiro). He then chronicles the different eras in the city’s development, showing how the French, Portuguese, English, and others exerted their influence at one time or another and created the mix of cultures that Rio remains today. But beyond this well-researched and meticulous dialogue of dates, names, and facts, Castro also paints the picture of the social and artistic history of the city–and how the cariocas came to be who they are.

Castro is the epitome of a carioca, a slang word meaning a resident of Rio, but he hastens to add that one does not have to be born here to become one. Those born in the city are cariocas da gema, literally “from the yolk of the egg,” but there are plenty of cariocas who originate somewhere else. This is one of Castro’s key themes, that Rio is a city of the world and bereft of anything resembling an apartheid mentality. It is the genuine melting pot that so many cities and nations strive to create but few achieve, and is seen in the ability of anyone who moves to Rio to become “one of us.” Castro writes that this “loss of nationality” is considered an achievement of Rio culture and society, and points out that it rarely runs both ways: “A carioca could never be Swiss, but a Swiss might be able to become carioca.”

I was lucky enough on a hotter-than-normal recent evening in Rio to hear Castro give a lecture on his book and the city at a bookshop that sits just a few short blocks from the most famous section of Rio, the Ipanema oceanfront. The shop, Toca do Vinicius, is named for Vinicius de Moraes, the poet and writer who served as a Brazilian diplomat to France. That was all before he met and collaborated with the songwriter Antonio Carlos Brasileiro de Almeida Jobim, or “Tom” Jobim, as he was more commonly known. Together they produced many of the most famous Bossa Nova songs, including “Garota de Ipanema” (The Girl From Ipanema). In the years since both men died, and the peak of the Bossa Nova movement, the shop has become a virtual mecca for those around the world looking for hard-to-find recordings and musical scores. But Toca do Vinicius is like most shops in Ipanema–barely the width of two bowling lanes, and only half as long–so lectures and small concerts are held on the pavement, in the open air, in front of the shop. On this night Castro sat at a small table and talked about how Rio is the Great Equalizer.

“Here in Ipanema,” he said, “there is only a small space between the ocean on one side and the lagoon further inland . . . people from all income levels use the same beach, drink beer in the same oceanfront bars, use the same cafes and coffeehouses. It is not unlikely to see a poor beach bum sitting at the same bar with a world-famous footballer–and both of them dressed almost completely alike. . . . Rio reduces everyone, whatever their origin, their fame or social class, to a shirt worn outside the trousers, a battered pair of Bermudas, and a pair of flip-flops.”

The result is that Rio–despite random crime and violence associated with the drug trade in the favelas, the sprawling slums that surround the city–is more civilized in many respects than other major cities. Castro credits this world in which young and old, rich and poor, share the same spaces for creating a city that “has no suicide bombers, radical separatists, young neo-nazis who beat up immigrants, sexual perverts, men who strangle rich old women, spotty youths who shoot their schoolmates dead, psychopathic snipers and other dangerous maniacs who contribute to the fame of Scotland Yard and the FBI.”

The dangers posed by violent crime aside, Rio is one of the most beautiful places on earth, and also one of the most inviting. But he also warns that “the friendliest city in the world” is in danger not from small-time criminals and drug lords, but from the politicians who, for the past four decades, have been seeking to either minimize Rio’s importance or destroy its legacy under the guise of modernizing it.

Rio was the capital of Brazil for over 300 years until 1960, when the artificially created capital, Brasília, was founded. Yet despite the change in venue, people still identify Rio as the center of all things Brazilian. All of the famous images of the nation–Sugar Loaf, the statue of Christ the Redeemer atop the mountain at Corcovado, the black and white ceramic tile mosaic pavements along Copacabana beach–are in Rio, and not in Brasília or Sâo Paulo, the Brazilian megapolis that is South America’s largest city. But various efforts have been made over time–some of them successful–to demolish this cornucopia of cultural landmarks.

“In the name of hygiene, progress and modernization, and all of the wonders they are supposed to bring,” Castro writes, “megalomaniacs equipped with two deadly weapons–a pencil and a blank sheet of paper–have persuaded Rio’s rulers to level a good part of the city’s heritage. If all the lunatic projects submitted to the mayors of Rio over the years had been carried out, several of the city’s symbols would have been consigned to the dustbin and we wouldn’t have the city as we know it.”

Castro may sound curmudgeonly, but most of his criticisms are on the mark. Which is the reason for his title, Carnival Under Fire. Carnival is the once-a-year Lenten bacchanalia that symbolizes much of what Rio is, and what the city and its history embody. Castro laments how the federal powers-that-be have been trying to chip away at Rio’s prosperity and prominence by eliminating the buildings and traditions that made it what it is. This “death by a thousand cuts” began when the capital was moved to Brasília: Bit by bit, federal agencies moved out, followed by the banks, businesses, and (very reluctantly, ten years later) the diplomatic corps. The city’s industry disappeared, the shipbuilding yards rusted away, and 14 of Rio’s 21 newspapers died out over the next 20 years, along with all 15 of its weekly magazines.

The passion to reduce Rio’s influence in Brazil continues to this day, the current cause being the rivalry between the governor of the Rio de Janeiro state and President Luiz Ináçio Lula da Silva. Many of the city’s ancient buildings and landmarks need to be refurbished or preserved, but the city is persevering. Investments made in new hotels, restaurants, and shopping malls began to pay off in the 1990s, and today Rio is thriving: The population of the Copacabana district, one of the most popular tourist areas, has grown from 183,000 in 1960 to almost a quarter-million today.

In spite of all attempts to do it harm, Rio remains (as the Portuguese title of Ruy Castro’s book calls it) “a city that is too exciting.”

Reuben F. Johnson, a writer and political analyst, is working with the family of Antonio Carlos Jobim to establish a museum in Rio in honor of the composer.